Leveraging the Collective Intelligence and Effort of Digital Crowds

October 31, 2015

Read The Full Prompt

In this module we have examined how firms can leverage digital technologies to harness the power of collective intelligence from the crowds to tackle a range of problems such as innovation problems and funding startups. For this assignment you have three options:

1 – Pick one industry where no firms have leveraged crowds, and come up with a crowd-based business model that may potentially transform the industry. Describe how you plan to create and capture value. Explain why the crowd will participate, and why your crowd-based model is better than the current model employed by the incumbents.

2 – Describe a company that is using crowds (external or internal) in an innovative manner. Describe how they incentivize participation and manage the crowd. What are the challenges? Describe how value creation and value capture occur, and the growth potential of this business.

3 – Companies often struggle with crowds as well. Describe failed crowdsourcing efforts and explain how and why the company failed. Given what you have learned in the course, what would you do differently?

Create an approximately 500-750 word post to make your contribution. Please create appropriate tags for your post. Please also respond to and comment on three other posts per module. Feel free to use graphics, data, videos and links to other sites to corroborate your points.

Please prepare a two minute pitch about your blog entry before the class.

Submitted (136)

Everyone on the Internet is an Expert
brandon
Posted on November 2, 2015 at 12:11 am
As I pen this likely masterpiece, I contemplate two things: (a) why in Heaven’s name was a blog post due on a Saturday night*, and (b) how well is humankind doing in its quest to semantically structure the world’s information? [...]
DLife: Facilitated Network for Diabetes Patients
Mike Maley
Posted on October 30, 2015 at 3:56 pm
DLife is a social network of sorts connecting diabetes patients with one another to share knowledge and information about managing the disease - but does sharing medical advice go too far?
Crowdsource Employee Ideas with Kindling
Madrid
Last modified on October 31, 2015 at 7:50 pm
Kindling is designed to engage the members of the organization in idea generation and increased collaboration.
Kraft’s Vegemite: the 2.0 time’s the charm?
Kathryn R
Last modified on October 26, 2015 at 11:54 am
It's easy to blame the crowd when crowdsourcing fails but most of the time the underlying reason for failure is in the design of the project. Kraft's Vegemite fiasco highlights the importance of thoughtful execution, especially when crowdsourcing the name [...]
Crowdsourcing sales forecasts: How Henkel leverages the collective wisdom of its employees
hawkeye
Last modified on October 28, 2015 at 5:30 pm
After traditional methods yielded unsatisfactory results, Henkel – which owns some of the most valuable European CPG brands – decided to leverage the collective wisdom of its employees to increase forecasting accuracy by using an internal prediction market.
ArcBazar: A marketplace for crowdsourcing architecture and design
Mati G
Last modified on October 31, 2015 at 10:10 am
ArcBazar is an online crowdsourcing platform focused on design and architecture projects, enabling people to easily find designers for their projects and at the same time, doing so in a very affordable way. On the other side, compete and collaborate [...]
OurCrowd: Changing the way startups are funded
#mustshop
Last modified on November 1, 2015 at 9:02 pm
Investment crowdsourcing platform that lets a closed network of investors pick and choose which startups (sourced by an experienced VC team) to invest in, at a minimum of $10k.
goFlow: Crowdsourcing surf reports
JI
Posted on October 26, 2015 at 4:32 pm
Surfing is considered by some as the ultimate extreme sport. Over 35 million people around the globe struggle to predict the tricky weather conditions to score the ride of their lives. This process is full of uncertainty and frustration as [...]
ShopShareCrop: How to support a closed food loop economy
Bougainvillea
Last modified on October 30, 2015 at 7:45 pm
ShopShareCrop presents a crowdsourcing solutions for grabbing those last-minute grocery items - without the excess fees of Instacart.
Watsi: ‘Giving Back’ through crowd sourcing!
Karthik
Last modified on October 31, 2015 at 5:59 pm
Watsi, one of the fastest growing non-profits in web history, represents the next generation of charities. It connects medical patients in the developing world who can’t afford the medical procedures they need with donors via the web who can donate [...]
Applause: Solving testing pain point with the power of crowds
GA
Last modified on October 31, 2015 at 10:41 am
Doron Reuveni met Roy Solomon at a party in Israel in 2007. Both worked in tech businesses and discovered they shared a view on a critical pain point for many companies: they have to build apps to reach millions of [...]
Bark & Co.: Using the Celebrity Dog Crowd
Damla
Last modified on October 30, 2015 at 3:29 pm
How 400 famous dogs became the sales team
Motif Investing: Democratizing investment selection for retail investors
QC
Posted on October 24, 2015 at 10:47 am
The traditional model of personal investing looks like this: individuals like you and me either sign up for a brokerage account, select investments and construct our own portfolios (“the DIY approach”) or hire a financial advisor that makes investment suggestions [...]
eYeka: crowdsourcing creativity
HelloSof
Posted on November 1, 2015 at 6:04 am
Disrupting the creative industry by leveraging the power of the crowd.. or not
OpenIDEO Brings Crowdsourced Creative Solutions to Solve Social Challenges
Sara Alsadi
Last modified on October 31, 2015 at 8:34 pm
OpenIDEO brings solutions to big challenges around the world by connecting sponsoring organizations with crowdsourced solutions from its community members
The Sharing Economy Applied to Insurance: Friends With Benefits
LMT
Last modified on November 2, 2015 at 8:12 pm
Today insurance customers are harnessing technology to form communities designed to share risks and reduce their insurance costs.
Intrade: Crowdsourced Wisdom?
Austin
Posted on November 1, 2015 at 11:03 pm
Intrade leveraged the wisdom of crowds by allowing users to bet on future world events and displaying shockingly accurate predictive power in the process.
giffgaff – the mobile network run by you
KP
Posted on October 30, 2015 at 2:49 pm
giffgaff's model is so customer centric, the customers do most of the work. So far this seems to be working, but is it enough? Can the company withstand change that is not predicted by its customers? Is it just a [...]
From drawings on a board to interactive apps – crowdsourced art
LC
Posted on October 31, 2015 at 4:53 pm
Collaborative art is not an entirely new concept but has become easier than ever with the advent of digital technology. Large installations such as ‘Unnumbered Sparks’ have brought crowds and technology together to allow large-scale art projects that were previously [...]
Waze – Crowdsourcing Maps and Traffic Information
S
Posted on December 6, 2015 at 8:59 pm
Waze is the world’s largest community-based traffic and navigation app which enables drivers to share real-time traffic and road info, saving other local drivers time and gas money on their commute. Like other GPS software, it learns from users’ driving [...]
Gogobot – The New Yelp?
DIGITite
Posted on October 30, 2015 at 6:19 pm
Gogobot is the go-to place for personalized recommendations for the best places to eat, sleep, drink or explore.  Have a few hours to kill in a new location and want to experience the best local spots? Gogobot may be your [...]
Crowded field of crowdsourcing recruiting platforms: how many will stay?
Angela Zhang
Posted on October 31, 2015 at 11:55 pm
What happens when there are lots of crowdsourcing platforms to choose from for a single task? Chris Russell recently posted a thoughtful piece on LinkedIn on the current players in crowdsourcing recruiters to help employers hire.  What was surprising to me was [...]
Deliv still short of viable business model.
vlad.hanzlik
Last modified on October 26, 2015 at 11:07 am
Deliv addressed many of the challenges of crowdshipping but will likely struggle proving its business model in the face of the tough economics of same-day delivery.
Crowdsourcing Construction
Jon Staff
Last modified on October 31, 2015 at 12:07 pm
Crowdsourcing construction could result in better homes built faster and more affordably.
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